Capitalism: Vulgar Displays Hold Hope.
I recently joined a quite heated and sobering debate on Capitalism vs. Socialism on the M
&G website and was struck by the challenges facing any attempt to change the status quo.
The tremendous growth of the Middle Class in South Africa has achieved what Apartheid could never achieve, and that is to build a buffer population that would defend the Capitalist system. The Middle Class has become vociferous in their defence of Capitalism and this is nowhere more clearly illustrated than with the recent "Sushi Party" debacle.
A strong case has been made for the rights of the Middle and Capitalist classes to flaunt their accumulation of wealth, with such mendacity that people such a Khanyi Mbau was able to garner significant support for her position.
The Steam Roller called Capital Accumulation has been able to trample any and all challenges to their right to eat Sushi, drive Flashy cars and live in extravagant mansions.
However, this arrogant display of the benefits of Greed and avarice, has highlighted the Achilles Heel of Capitalism in a very succinct way.
Greed, which drives the Capitalist Model, is also the architect of its regular demise and crises.
Throughout the history of Capitalism the ostentatious displays of wild and excessive greed have always been the precursors of its next crises.
So in some perverse way I am rather optimistic that this vulgar display of Class Disparity holds the hope of change.
During the discussion on the pros and cons of Socialism and Capitalism I remarked that Capitalism is a Barbaric and inhumane system and I was immediately met with a barrage of protest, and was asked the question: "No one who claims Capitalism is barbaric and inhumane has ever shown a valid reason for their claim. Perhaps you would care to enlighten us as to how Capitalism, as a system, inevitably ends up with mostly poor, a small middle class, and a tiny upper class."
My Response which for some unknown reason was not published by the M&G went something like this.
Capitalism has the devious honour of having created a person that has neither flesh nor bone, and does not subscribe to the basic definition of a human being, yet has as many if not more legal rights than human beings.
They are notoriously difficult to prosecute legally and are protected by reams of legislation.
Their only reason for existence is the maximisation of Profits. All else (including human dignity, health, wealth and well being) is secondary to this cause.
They have created an artificial person that we have come to know as the Corporation, or the Company.
So to answer the first question around humanity, Capitalism’s inhumanity has no better representative action than the creation of artificial beings that have no human inclinations. Like the Monster in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, this creation has an insatiable appetite (for profit), and will stop at absolutely nothing to still it hunger. The Moment this creation stops seeking Profit, at all costs, it inevitably withers away and dies.
To speak to its barbarism one has but to drive out of the leafy suburbs to the squalor and destitution of the Townships and countless informal settlements dotted around the cities and towns of South Africa.
Yes this was a creation and a result of the Apartheid system but what is seldom acknowledged is that Apartheid was merely a vehicle for Capitalism.
They rode this vehicle until the wheels fell off, and in the end the Captains of Industry, were the architects of the demise of Apartheid, not because of any moral imperative, but because of a profit imperative.
The Captains of Industry had realised that the economy was stagnant and shrinking, that they needed to increase the consumer market and that the unrest and lack of opportunities for the subjugated masses meant that they were not able to increase the consumer market and thus they needed to allow these masses access to the main colonial market.
In order to do this they needed a majority government that would be sympathetic to their cause.
They immediately started to recruit potential candidates and within a decade had captured a significant part of the ANC elite, bestowing undeserved wealth on a new black elite and changing the dynamic of the African middle class in a very efficient and anti social way.
Now, had the Capitalist System been civilised and Humane, it would have ensured the distribution of wealth and social upliftment amoung the masses of suffering and destitute, instead they consigned these to even more misery and ensured that the gap between the rich and the poor grew even larger.
John Berger an art critic, novelist, painter and author. The best-known among his many works include the novel G., winner of the 1972 Booker Prize, and the introductory essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, wrote:
"The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing."
And therein lays our barbarism, the ease with which we are able to ignore the beggar, the squatter camp we pass, the malnourished, unclothed child who has to go to an open toilet in full view of passing traffic.
Therein lies our barbarism, when we value Profit above Humanity.
&G website and was struck by the challenges facing any attempt to change the status quo.
The tremendous growth of the Middle Class in South Africa has achieved what Apartheid could never achieve, and that is to build a buffer population that would defend the Capitalist system. The Middle Class has become vociferous in their defence of Capitalism and this is nowhere more clearly illustrated than with the recent "Sushi Party" debacle.
A strong case has been made for the rights of the Middle and Capitalist classes to flaunt their accumulation of wealth, with such mendacity that people such a Khanyi Mbau was able to garner significant support for her position.
The Steam Roller called Capital Accumulation has been able to trample any and all challenges to their right to eat Sushi, drive Flashy cars and live in extravagant mansions.
However, this arrogant display of the benefits of Greed and avarice, has highlighted the Achilles Heel of Capitalism in a very succinct way.
Greed, which drives the Capitalist Model, is also the architect of its regular demise and crises.
Throughout the history of Capitalism the ostentatious displays of wild and excessive greed have always been the precursors of its next crises.
So in some perverse way I am rather optimistic that this vulgar display of Class Disparity holds the hope of change.
During the discussion on the pros and cons of Socialism and Capitalism I remarked that Capitalism is a Barbaric and inhumane system and I was immediately met with a barrage of protest, and was asked the question: "No one who claims Capitalism is barbaric and inhumane has ever shown a valid reason for their claim. Perhaps you would care to enlighten us as to how Capitalism, as a system, inevitably ends up with mostly poor, a small middle class, and a tiny upper class."
My Response which for some unknown reason was not published by the M&G went something like this.
Capitalism has the devious honour of having created a person that has neither flesh nor bone, and does not subscribe to the basic definition of a human being, yet has as many if not more legal rights than human beings.
They are notoriously difficult to prosecute legally and are protected by reams of legislation.
Their only reason for existence is the maximisation of Profits. All else (including human dignity, health, wealth and well being) is secondary to this cause.
They have created an artificial person that we have come to know as the Corporation, or the Company.
So to answer the first question around humanity, Capitalism’s inhumanity has no better representative action than the creation of artificial beings that have no human inclinations. Like the Monster in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, this creation has an insatiable appetite (for profit), and will stop at absolutely nothing to still it hunger. The Moment this creation stops seeking Profit, at all costs, it inevitably withers away and dies.
To speak to its barbarism one has but to drive out of the leafy suburbs to the squalor and destitution of the Townships and countless informal settlements dotted around the cities and towns of South Africa.
Yes this was a creation and a result of the Apartheid system but what is seldom acknowledged is that Apartheid was merely a vehicle for Capitalism.
They rode this vehicle until the wheels fell off, and in the end the Captains of Industry, were the architects of the demise of Apartheid, not because of any moral imperative, but because of a profit imperative.
The Captains of Industry had realised that the economy was stagnant and shrinking, that they needed to increase the consumer market and that the unrest and lack of opportunities for the subjugated masses meant that they were not able to increase the consumer market and thus they needed to allow these masses access to the main colonial market.
In order to do this they needed a majority government that would be sympathetic to their cause.
They immediately started to recruit potential candidates and within a decade had captured a significant part of the ANC elite, bestowing undeserved wealth on a new black elite and changing the dynamic of the African middle class in a very efficient and anti social way.
Now, had the Capitalist System been civilised and Humane, it would have ensured the distribution of wealth and social upliftment amoung the masses of suffering and destitute, instead they consigned these to even more misery and ensured that the gap between the rich and the poor grew even larger.
John Berger an art critic, novelist, painter and author. The best-known among his many works include the novel G., winner of the 1972 Booker Prize, and the introductory essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, wrote:
"The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing."
And therein lays our barbarism, the ease with which we are able to ignore the beggar, the squatter camp we pass, the malnourished, unclothed child who has to go to an open toilet in full view of passing traffic.
Therein lies our barbarism, when we value Profit above Humanity.
Comments
Post a Comment